Derrick Austin

Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and longlisted for a Golden Poppy Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016) selected by Mary Syzbist for the A. Poulin Jr, Poetry Prize. His debut collection was honored as a finalist for the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the 2017 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and the 2017 Norma Faber First Book Award. A chapbook, Black Sand, is forthcoming in early 2022 from Foundlings Press.

• University of Michigan, MFA in Poetry, 2014
• University of Tampa, BA in English and Creative Writing, 2011

• Stegner Fellow in Poetry, Stanford
• Ron Wallace Poetry Fellow, University of Wisconsin (Madison)

• Austin, Derrick. Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021).

• Austin, Derrick. Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016).